Harper fosters culture of secrecy and impunity in his government.

Here's a round-up of recent news items regarding the ongoing micromanagement of the Harper government by its tinpot tyrant.

Aaron Wherry has been monitoring what he has aptly named "The quiet cuts".

Some excerpts from his excellent ongoing overview:

CBC reported last week that the government will close eight Veterans Affairs offices.[...]The Canadian Forces recruiting centre in Windsor has closed. And Canada Post is considering service cuts.

Meanwhile, there are new concerns being raised about the end of the Police Officer Recruitment Fund—see previously, The Demise of the Police Officer Recruitment Fund. Vic Toews defends the fund as a “one-time investment.”

In Vancouver, the Kitsilano Coast Guard station was quietly closed last week, apparently to the surprise of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. Global News wonders if the closure has something to do with selling the land the station is located on.

The Conservative government’s spending restraint is focusing on front-line services while back-office spending continues to rise, says a new report from the Parliamentary Budget Office.

That’s exactly the opposite of promises made by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who said last year that the majority of Ottawa’s $5.2-billion austerity program would target administrative and support costs without impacting service to the public.

Nearly a hundred employees at the National Research Council have received affected notices.

“There’s a much larger game afoot but it’s being rolled out in a really stealthy way,” said Kennedy Stewart, the NDP critic for science and technology. “When we look back in a couple of years we’ll see that it really is part of a larger plan and it will probably have an impact on our international standing.”

[...]94 National Research Council employees across the country received notification letters that their services “may no longer be required,” according to a statement released that day by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. Those employees include scientists, researchers and business development officers who work in the life sciences, engineering, and business management divisions. They are located in Halifax, Moncton, Fredericton, London, Regina, Winnipeg and Ottawa, the union’s statement said.

So front line service workers and staff in critical positions, professionals who ensure the departments' mandates are implemented, have have been removed.  Is this an insidious way for Harper to profoundly subvert the civil service in order to put in place non-union employees that are mere cogs in the machinery of his government's servitude to corporate interests?  This identifies how he will accomplish his goal:

Economist David Macdonald decided to find out how many consultants, contractors and temporary workers the federal government was hiring and how much Canadians were paying for them.

It took him about a year. What he discovered was a burgeoning “shadow public service.” Last year it cost taxpayers $1.2 billion. That was 79 per cent higher than when Prime Minister Stephen Harper took power in 2006.

Despite a spending freeze in the federal bureaucracy, it is still growing by leaps and bounds.

“Without prompt corrective action, outsourcing costs will continue to soar,” said Macdonald, a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

He sifted through 300,000 government contracts and pored over the five years’ worth of public accounts to find out what was happening, pinpoint the big spenders and track the trends. The deeper he looked, the more troubling the pattern became.

Not only had the cost of contract workers ballooned, the nature of their work had changed. No longer were they brought in for short-term projects or hired to provide expertise the government did not have. They did exactly the same work as public servants. They sat alongside them, had government email addresses and handled confidential government information.

That last bit... "handled confidential government information"... such as this?

In an email, Privacy Commissioner spokeswoman Anne-Marie Hayden confirmed that the office is looking into the possible involvement of a Department of Justice Canada employee. “Our office is contacting those who have already filed an official complaint against HRSDC in relation to the USB key incident to seek their consent to an amendment of their complaint to include both HRSDC and Justice Canada as respondents.”

“Administrative investigations are underway to determine all the facts surrounding this matter. The Department of Justice is part of the investigations,” wrote a Department of Justice Canada spokesperson in an email. She declined to comment on specific details, writing that, “It would be inappropriate to comment further while the investigations are ongoing.”

Ted Charney, senior partner at Falconer Charney LLP, one of the law firms involved in the class action lawsuit on behalf of CPP applicants whose information was lost, finds it disconcerting that CPP information may have been shared with the Department of Justice Canada.

“I don’t know how somebody’s confidential health information to apply for a CPP disability pension ends up in front of employees with the Department of Justice,” he said. “I don’t know if somebody when they applied for a CPP disability pension ever realized that the government intends to show that information to other departments, including the DOJ.”

Charney said that nearly all of the 5,000 people affected by the first data breach have registered with the class action lawsuit. “To the extent that the class members are additionally harmed because of the Department of Justice investigation, it could expand the nature of the claim. It certainly expands the nature of our inquiry into what’s been going on federally in terms of protecting information and how it’s exchanged between various departments.”

It certainly seems Harper, an ambitious, greedy man playing chess with Canadians' collective and individual well-being whilst being a loyal and indebted servant to corporate rule, is carrying out his stated objective of making this country over, so that no decent citizen will recognize what it's become.

More quotes from PMSHithead, the man who engineered a majority government with 39% of the vote, likely through election fraud and vote suppression, here.

Also, read the fierce response from the Public Service Alliance of Canada, here.

Added: As fern hill pointed out on Twitter, 900-foot Jesus at her blog Of Gods and Monsters, has also been diligently tracking CON fraudulence, for example this.

It's my blog and I'll rant if I want to

This morning I was listening to CBC Toronto's local radio show. Naturally, the talk is all about the cuts to city services. The show's producers managed to find someone who would admit to being a Rob Ford supporter and speak on the radio.

His name is Jerry Sheehan, described as an accountant from Scarborough and long-time supporter of Mayor Ford.

Matt Galloway points out that the cuts under discussion will affect the 'most vulnerable people' and asks: 'Is that fair?'

Sheehan waffles about the appropriate level of government to provide such services, asserting it's not the city.

First clue: he calls subsidized daycare an entitlement.

Galloway says all levels of government are strapped and it is the city that is providing those services at the moment. He asks: What do you say to people who rely on those services now?

Sheehan goes all sympathetic then says that folks are going to have to be creative, maybe work from home. He calls these programs 'entitlements' again.

Second clue. Sheehan says he doesn't go to the Zoo, doesn't use daycare, implication being, sure, go ahead, cut things I don't use.

Galloway winds up with Ford's guarantee not to cut services and asks: Did he lie or was he unaware of the deficit? Are you troubled?

Sheehan produces faff about Ford's being unaware, reality setting in, etc.

OK. Sheehan is just a guy -- I assume he's not a political operator -- but he is absolutely typical of the douchebag suburbanites who are ruining Toronto.

When he said poor folks have to be creative, I wanted to reach for his collar and slap him silly.

Anecdote time!

I have a friend who has been running a struggling small manufacturing/artsy-craftsy biz for decades. About 15 years ago, things started to look up. She was getting bigger orders from the kind of retailers she wanted. She got a big (for her) pre-Xmas order from a customer she'd been chasing for years. While it was much more upscale than Wal-Mart, the delivery schedule was just as demanding.

If she fucked it up, she was probably out of business.

She needed hands. I wasn't doing much and said I'd work for her for a couple of weeks.

She was grateful but embarrassed that she couldn't offer me much more than minimum wage. It was more, about 25% more, but still.

And her workplace was in Mississauga.

So, for two weeks, I took a streetcar to the subway, rode subway to end of line, got Mississauga Transit (separate fare), then walked about ten minutes. At least an hour and a half on a good day.

Then manual labour, standing, for eight hours. Repeat journey home. (Sometimes pal would drive me to subway -- big time and cost savings.)

I get motion sickness if I try to read, so I obsessed thought during my travels. I calculated what I was making per week, guessed at something for withholding, got a figure for take-home.

Next, I deducted transit. Two fares each way, remember. There would have been savings with a Metro Pass and whatever the Mississauga Transit version is, but I figured I'd have to save up for those, so used regular fares for my cyphering.

Next, deduct rent. I've lived under rent control for a long time, so my one-bedroom apartment is very reasonable. For downtown Toronto, that is. And the deposit was already taken of.

Next, deduct hydro and phone. I've never had cable and if I had Internet then, it would have been dial-up, under $10 a month.

Next, shock.

What was left was pitiable. I could eat, but not very well. Clothes would have to be carefully budgeted for. Personal care items would have to be of a generic type. Dental visits would have to be reduced to once a year, if that.

Off my horizon altogether: meals out, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, haircuts, cigarettes, booze, vacations.

Also off my horizon would be savings of any kind. The most minor emergency expense would send me to my friends for a loan. And how would I pay that off?

I worked these figures over and over. I kept remembering stuff I'd forgotten. Laundry! Glasses! Prescriptions!

And then there was time. I was exhausted. I could barely feed myself dinner and take a bath before falling into bed. Before it started all over again.

So. I had my own experiment of being Nickel and Dimed. For a whole two bruising weeks.

In fuckwad Jerry Sheehan's world, if transit fares went up, or service was cut making my day even longer, I would just get creative I guess.

Hitch-hike? Find a roomie? Use food banks? Cancel the phone? Give up on shampoo, toothpaste, and deodorant?

People like Jerry have no fucking clue. But maybe some are getting a hint of one.

ERM: I was taken to task on Twitter for using the phrase 'suburban douchebags'. To clarify: Not all suburbanites hate the city. Some love it and participate in events and probably did not vote for Rob Ford and gang. I meant the people who USE the city and don't give a shit about it other than its roads, traffic, and parking. Those suburban douchebags who voted for Ford and gang.